Amazon launches free AI prompts for sponsored ad campaigns

Amazon Ads announced on November 11, 2025, the introduction of Sponsored Products prompts and Sponsored Brands prompts, an artificial intelligence-powered enhancement that automatically engages shoppers with relevant product information throughout their purchasing journey. The feature launched as a free beta at the company's annual unBoxed conference, where Amazon showcases advertising solutions designed to help businesses connect with customers across multiple touchpoints.

The prompts function as conversational, interactive ad variations offered at no cost during the beta phase while Amazon's systems learn and optimize performance. According to the announcement, the technology leverages Amazon's first-party signals from detail pages, Brand Stores, campaign data, and additional sources to surface product expertise at key decision moments. Shoppers struggle to find specific information when making purchase decisions. The prompts address this challenge by functioning as what Amazon describes as a 24/7 virtual product expert, automatically surfacing relevant details before shoppers formulate questions.

The enhancement maintains brand safety through Amazon's verified first-party signals and built-in safety parameters, according to the announcement. This approach differs from generic chatbot implementations by grounding responses in authenticated product information rather than allowing open-ended generation that could produce inaccurate or off-brand content. Amazon automatically enrolls Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns in prompts without requiring additional setup from advertisers. Once reporting becomes available, sellers and vendors can review and manage prompts directly in the Ads Console.

Within each campaign, advertisers navigate to Campaign → Ad Group → Ads → Prompts tab, where all prompts appear if they received a click. This view displays the prompt text, the associated advertisement, and key performance metrics including impressions, clicks, and orders. The reporting structure enables advertisers to evaluate which conversational interactions drive engagement and conversions, providing data for optimization decisions. Sponsored Products prompts reporting will become available within existing campaign reporting by the end of November 2025, according to Amazon's documentation.

Advertisers can monitor performance through the Ads Console, downloadable reports, or API access. The launch enters open beta in the United States during November 2025, with the beta feature available to all U.S. Amazon advertisers using Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns. The company excluded authors and publishers from the beta program. Prompts are automatically enabled for existing campaigns, with performance metrics and opt-out controls accessible through the Ads Console.

The conversational advertising format represents Amazon's latest application of artificial intelligence to its advertising infrastructure. Amazon launched Creative Agent in September 2025 as a conversational creative partner within Creative Studio, which expanded to support Streaming TV and Sponsored TV advertising formats at the same unBoxed 2025 conference. The company also introduced Ads Agent on November 11, 2025, an artificial intelligence agent that automates campaign management tasks across Amazon Marketing Cloud and Multimedia Solutions with Amazon DSP.

These AI implementations follow Amazon's pattern of reducing technical barriers to advertising platform adoption. The company launched unified advertiser accounts in October 2025, enabling single-login access to all advertising products across regions. That development eliminated previous requirements where advertisers needed separate accounts for each advertising product per country. Amazon made Marketing Cloud directly accessible to sponsored ads advertisers in September 2025, removing partner coordination requirements for advanced analytics.

The automated prompt generation contrasts with traditional advertising approaches where brands manually craft every message variant. Amazon's system dynamically generates conversational responses based on the specific context of each shopper interaction, product attributes, and available first-party data. This automation enables scale impossible through manual creative development, particularly for advertisers with extensive product catalogs spanning hundreds or thousands of items. The technology processes shopping signals to determine which product information matters most for individual purchase decisions.

The free beta structure allows Amazon to collect performance data across diverse advertiser types, product categories, and shopping scenarios before determining pricing models. Advertisers gain access to conversational advertising capabilities without incremental costs during this testing period, while Amazon captures behavioral data about which prompt formats and content types drive engagement. The timing aligns with broader industry movement toward conversational commerce interfaces. Amazon introduced Help Me Decide on October 23, 2025, using large language models to analyze browsing history and recommend products with one tap for millions of users.

The feature appears on product detail pages after customers view several similar items, providing one primary recommendation along with explanations highlighting relevant features and customer review insights. These consumer-facing AI tools complement the advertiser-facing prompt capabilities by creating an ecosystem where conversational interactions occur throughout the shopping journey. The prompts matter for marketing professionals because they fundamentally alter how sponsored advertisements engage shoppers. Traditional sponsored product and brand advertisements drive traffic to detail pages where shoppers must independently research specifications, compatibility, and use cases.

The conversational prompts enable advertisements themselves to provide this information, potentially reducing friction in the purchase path by answering questions before shoppers navigate away to conduct additional research. This shift could improve conversion rates for advertisers whose products require explanation or have complex feature sets that benefit from guided discovery. The automatic enrollment requires advertisers to monitor prompt performance and content to ensure AI-generated responses align with brand messaging and accurately represent products. While Amazon implements safety parameters, the conversational format introduces variables absent from static advertisement creative.

Advertisers operating in regulated categories or with specific brand voice requirements may need to evaluate whether automatically generated prompts meet their standards. The opt-out controls provide an exit mechanism for advertisers who determine the feature doesn't align with their strategies. Amazon's $15.7 billion quarterly advertising revenue in Q2 2025 demonstrates the platform's importance to the company's business model as marketplace competition intensifies. The 22% year-over-year growth significantly outpaced overall revenue growth of 13%, according to earnings disclosures from July 31, 2025.

CEO Andy Jassy emphasized during the earnings call that the platform helps advertisers reach an average ad-supported audience exceeding 300 million across owned properties in the United States alone. The sponsored advertising formats receiving prompt enhancements represent core products driving this revenue growth. Sponsored Products campaigns help increase product sales by placing advertisements in search results and product detail pages. Sponsored Brands campaigns build brand awareness and drive consideration through custom creative featuring brand logos, headlines, and multiple products.

The conversational enhancement potentially increases the value of these placements by extending engagement duration and information density within the advertisement unit itself. The technical architecture underlying prompts builds on Amazon's existing machine learning infrastructure. The company has applied artificial intelligence across its advertising stack, including campaign optimization, relevancy models in Amazon DSP, and creative generation for images, video, and audio content. The first-party signals powering prompts include purchase history, browsing behavior, search queries, and product attribute data collected across Amazon's retail ecosystem.

This proprietary data access creates competitive advantages over third-party advertising platforms that lack direct visibility into shopping behavior. The beta launch coincides with Amazon's broader infrastructure expansion supporting advertising technology. Amazon Web Services announced AWS RTB Fabric on October 23, 2025, a managed service designed specifically for real-time bidding advertising workloads. The service helps advertising technology companies connect with supply and demand partners to run high-volume, latency-sensitive RTB workloads with consistent single-digit millisecond performance and up to 80% lower networking costs.

Amazon introduced Reserve Share of Voice for branded search in October, enabling brands to secure Sponsored Brands top-of-search placements through API access at fixed prices. The conversational prompt capability extends Amazon's position in conversational commerce as AI-powered shopping agents emerge from multiple vendors. Amazon demanded Perplexity stop AI shopping in Comet browser in early November, sending a legal letter after the AI startup's browser enabled users to request product searches and complete purchases on Amazon through conversational interfaces.

The dispute centered on whether third-party AI assistants should access e-commerce platforms to execute purchases on behalf of users. Amazon maintains $56 billion in annual advertising revenue built around shoppers browsing its marketplace, according to financial disclosures. The business model depends on sponsored product listings, display advertisements, and video content across its ecosystem. By controlling the conversational advertising interface through prompts, Amazon maintains its advertising ecosystem while providing AI-powered shopping assistance.

The opt-out structure gives advertisers control while defaulting campaigns to prompt enablement. This approach mirrors Amazon's strategy with other automated features where participation becomes standard unless advertisers actively disable functionality. The documentation specifies that prompts only appear in the reporting interface if they received clicks, suggesting Amazon filters out generated prompts that failed to engage shoppers. This data collection methodology focuses advertiser attention on prompts that demonstrated traction rather than overwhelming reporting with every generated variation.

The competitive landscape for conversational advertising includes major platforms implementing AI-powered automation. Meta's Advantage+ suite handles targeting, creative optimization, placements, and budget allocation with minimal human oversight, reporting $20 billion annual run rate and 22% return on advertising spend improvements. Google Ads Asset Studio beta launched globally in August 2025, consolidating creative production capabilities previously requiring third-party software. TikTok introduced Smart+ in 2024, with Symphony AI assisting with script writing and video production for the platform's vertical video format.

Amazon's prompts differentiate through integration with shopping intent signals and product information rather than social engagement metrics. The November 11 timing at unBoxed positions the beta for holiday shopping season implementation, when increased traffic and conversion activity provide substantial data for machine learning optimization. Amazon historically uses high-volume periods to test and refine advertising products under realistic competitive conditions. The prompt reporting structure separates this capability from general campaign metrics while maintaining integration with existing performance data.

Advertisers can evaluate prompt contribution to overall campaign results without requiring separate budget allocation or bid management. The feature operates as an enhancement layer rather than a distinct campaign type, lowering adoption barriers by avoiding the need to restructure existing account organization. Marketing professionals should monitor several factors during the beta period. Prompt content quality and brand alignment require ongoing evaluation to ensure AI-generated responses meet standards. Conversion rate impacts on ads receiving prompts compared to standard ads indicate whether the conversational format improves purchase path efficiency.

Customer feedback channels may surface shopper reactions to the conversational format, particularly around information accuracy and usefulness. Opt-out rates across the advertiser base will signal whether the automatic enrollment approach meets market acceptance. Amazon's documentation emphasizes that the enhancement helps "accelerate purchase decisions" by providing information shoppers need without requiring them to ask questions. This passive information delivery differs from reactive chatbots that only respond to explicit queries.

The prompts anticipate information needs based on context including the product category, shopper behavior signals, and common question patterns observed across similar products. The artificial intelligence determines which details matter most for individual shopping scenarios rather than presenting standardized information across all interactions. The beta phase will determine whether this anticipatory approach resonates with shoppers and drives measurable improvements in advertising performance for the participating brands.

Timeline

• October 23, 2025: Amazon Web Services announces AWS RTB Fabric for real-time bidding workloads with single-digit millisecond latency
• October 23, 2025: Amazon introduces Help Me Decide feature using large language models to analyze browsing history and recommend products
• October 2025: Amazon announces Reserve Share of Voice enabling fixed-price branded keyword reservations for Sponsored Brands
• November 4, 2025: Amazon demands Perplexity stop AI shopping in Comet browser through legal letter
• November 10, 2025: Amazon announces revamped Campaign Manager consolidating sponsored ads and Amazon DSP at unBoxed 2025
• November 11, 2025: Amazon Ads announces Sponsored Products prompts and Sponsored Brands prompts as free beta at unBoxed conference
• November 11, 2025: Amazon announces Creative Agent expansion to support Streaming TV and Sponsored TV advertising formats
• November 11, 2025: Amazon introduces Ads Agent for automated campaign management across Marketing Cloud and DSP
• End of November 2025: Sponsored Products prompts reporting becomes available within existing campaign reporting in Ads Console

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads launched the feature affecting all U.S. advertisers using Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns, excluding authors and publishers. Sellers and vendors can review and manage prompts through the Ads Console once reporting becomes available.

What: Sponsored Products prompts and Sponsored Brands prompts represent an AI-powered enhancement that automatically generates conversational, interactive ad variations engaging shoppers with relevant product information. The technology leverages Amazon's first-party signals from detail pages, Brand Stores, and campaign data to surface product expertise at decision moments. The feature operates as a free beta while Amazon's systems learn and optimize performance.

When: Amazon announced the feature on November 11, 2025, at its annual unBoxed conference. The launch enters open beta in the United States during November 2025, with Sponsored Products prompts reporting becoming available within existing campaign reporting by the end of November.

Where: The feature operates exclusively in the United States during the beta phase, accessible through the Amazon Ads Console. Advertisers navigate to Campaign → Ad Group → Ads → Prompts tab within each campaign to view prompt text, associated advertisements, and performance metrics including impressions, clicks, and orders.

Why: The prompts address shopper challenges in finding specific information needed for purchase decisions by functioning as a 24/7 virtual product expert that automatically surfaces relevant details before questions arise. Amazon maintains brand safety through verified first-party signals and built-in safety parameters while providing advertisers with conversational advertising capabilities at scale without incremental costs during the beta period. The automatic enrollment and free structure enable Amazon to collect performance data across diverse advertiser types and product categories before determining future pricing models.